The Availability Services division of SunGard, which helps organizations plan against, and recover from major business interruptions, announced today that it is allocating 5 million to upgrade facilities across the City of London. This investment is in addition to a 15 million upgrade of data centre facilities at the London Technology Centre in Hounslow, and a nationwide Recovery Centre enhancement programme.
SunGard says awareness of potential interruptions such as a terrorist attack on the City has risen to a point where the unavailability of premises is a key issue for many firms. “The investment programme reflects customers’ geographical demands for services in the capital, as they, particularly in the financial sector, concern themselves with securing recovery facilities away from existing offices but within the area,” says the IT company.
SunGard will be upgrading facilities at its South Bank Recovery Campus and also the Docklands Recovery Campus. The ultimate potential at the Southbank Recovery Campus will rise to 1,800 shared and dedicated user positions within two buildings, increasing the total number of available Workplace Recovery seats in central London by more than 1,000. SunGard adds that the London Technology Centre in Hounslow will become the largest dedicated data centre for business continuity in Europe.
All facilities link to the existing SunGard ATM national network, which links SunGard’s regional UK sites, as well as to ‘ScaleNet’, the high bandwidth metropolitan area network (MAN) for the London-region. ATM and ScaleNet are also being linked to the trans-Atlantic SunGard Global Network.
“The new City facilities will mean that clients who require high availability services and extremely resilient networks will benefit from unrivalled levels of data centre technology coupled with the experience and skills of our newly expanded workforce,” says Keith Tilley, managing director of SunGard Availability Services UK. “We are constantly striving to increase overall data centre capacity and workplace provision across the UK, aiming to provide exemplary customer service. ‘ScaleNet’ will be a key part of the City offering, especially as the level of potential risk has increased in the last year.”
‘ScaleNet’ links SunGard’s London-based Recovery Campuses together, and also connects to the London Technology Centre. It also provides high-bandwidth recovery and data management options for City-based clients. A full investment programme is being carried out across the rest of SunGard’s Data and Recovery Centres in the UK.